Why can't the moon be a star, Kagome?
by Bawgdan
Summary: Like an illness, love has no prejudice. It interrupts lives. Destroys women. Sometimes it starts wars. (Drabble Collection) InuxSan
1. If we look up

**"I am losing parts of you like I lose eyelashes. Unknowingly and everywhere." ~ Rupi Kaur**

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Sango's father used to tell her that no matter where she stands in the world, she can never truly be lost if she knew north from south and east from west. She wonders how Kagome can distinguish up from down when she dives into the well.

"Why don't you ever tell Kagome that you miss her?" Sango has been watching him for the past three days.

Inuyasha stirs as if she had disturbed him from a nap–as if he hadn't heard her coming at all and she wants to ask him why he pretends to be human in practice. Especially when he doesn't have to. When she walked away and the sun began to set, he'd still be able to smell her feet trailing back to the village.

"I swear I have." Inuyasha's left ear twitches. He pretends to appear startled.

"She tells me everything." Every little detail. About that time she scraped her knee when she was twelve on her 'bicycle'. Kagome talked about a lot of things that made Sango feel miniscule. The world is big, but beneath her, in another time, it's even bigger.

Sango leans against the well and peers down, ducking her head into the darkness, her hair slips around her face as she inhales the smell of wet stones. Perking her lips, she tumbles a whistle into the wondrous depths of the well.

"Does she really?" Inuyasha watches her, paying close attention to her nails scraping against the dirt. He's scared she will fall over, but reminds himself that she's not as clumsy as Kagome.

"Mhhmm." Sango pulls her head from the well. Her hair disastrously falls around her features and she makes no effort to right her twisting bangs. "Everything. Are you curious to know?"

"Wouldn't that make you a bad friend for telling me?" He smirks but it's a very distant amusement. Sango spits strands of hair from her mouth and tucks some behind an ear. Her smile rivals his in distance.

"Not if it's for the greater good. What does her 'textbook' call it?"

"Uuuuutil...itarianism?" Inuyasha frowns as his tongue stiffens.

"What a strange word."

"Why I even remember it is the real mystery."

They both fall into a comfortable silence, both of them gazing down the mouth of the well. For a moment, she thinks she can hear it whisper– about destiny and she gets tingles up her arms.

Inuyasha feels the immediate spark of her mood but he ignores it, flaring his nostrils and exhaling.

"I wonder how Kagome avoids becoming lost." Sango drags her eyes from the bottomless shadows and blinks at Inuyasha.

"What do you mean?" He looks at her from the corner of his eye.

"How does she not feel trapped? Wouldn't you lose your mind not knowing whether you're coming to the right place or not?" It makes sense in her head.

"That's the difference between you two. You have survival instincts. Kagome has a bicycle and textbooks." The new words she teaches them feel like secret passwords or spells. Kagome has the consistency of soil, but there's something wonderful about being that attainable. Anyone can get a hold of her and wring out the answers.

Stars apparently are glowing orbs of 'gas'– the sun is a huge star as well.

The thing about soil is that it's soft and can erode. People also bury bodies in the dirt to decay.

But sometimes people grow gardens.

Why can't the moon be a star, Kagome?

"She keeps coming back–to the right place so maybe there's nothing to worry about." Inuyasha reads her still body. It feels invasive but she understands that he can't help it.

"Inuyasha, why are you so modest about your senses?" And not honest about his feelings of doubt? If he wants Kagome, the answer is easy but he purposely makes it an arduous journey.

"Because it makes people uncomfortable."

"We aren't just 'people' though."

Inuyasha had learned that honesty wasn't always good for the people closest to him. The truth could be just as painful as a lie. He doesn't respond immediately, but he does step closer, gently taking her arm and holding up her hand.

"Even though it's been days, I can still smell the blood under your nails. You've dipped your hands in water plenty of times but it still isn't enough to get yourself clean..." If he tries hard enough, he could envision where the blood had dried on her skin.

"I'm not uncomfortable." Sango doesn't flinch away from him. She balances his glare with stone resolve.

"I might as well be a mind reader."

"And if you were one you'd have more confidence in all of us." She reproaches him.

The trees pause. The well stops murmuring. Inuyasha doesn't readily let go of her hand. When the wind stops blowing, her scent rises and sits in place. Sango, all of her details, are no longer scattered bits he has to pick from the air. The sound of her throat rolling, the heat rising to her ears– he catches himself holding on to her design for too long and releases her.

Sango catches him too; in what looks like the middle of fantasy that involves a full course meal or a childlike curiosity concerning the inside of a beehive.

But it's a slow retraction to a sudden feeling.

"You smell like Kagome." It's that strange smell that settles at her scalp after a bath. That strange foam she scrubs into her hair. 'Strawberries' she had claimed but it doesn't smell like any fruit he's ever eaten before. Sure as hell not strawberries.

"I think she calls it shampoo." Sango's face is scarlet.

"But it doesn't smell like strawberries at all." Inuyasha folds his arms and his cheeks expand.

"I don't think so either."

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 **A/N: This is just a series of drabbles in no particular order. I had them uploaded on AO3 first and now I'm going to store them here as a whole collection. I hope you enjoy. If you want to send me prompts or recs to add to this collection, hit up my tumblr ask box or my inbox on here. Either way works. Or you can make a suggestion in the review section. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day. My tumblr is the same as my pen name.**


	2. Salt Water Snails

_**"She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order." ~ Toni Morisson**_

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At the speed he tugs her, too fast to contemplate the normalcy of their fingers interlocked, streaks of moonlight zip above their heads. Even while human, Inuyasha retains an unnatural speed– it's as if she's being forcefully plucked from her dreams.

"Inuyasha...?" She drowsily stammers. As the forest takes dark forms within her line of vision, the sudden shame of being picked from her sleep and stepping over an unconscious Shippo hits her in the chest. Miroku always sleeps like a corpse, drunk on all of his vices, but she can't shake the feeling that someone was watching her.

When Inuyasha stops in a clearing, she takes a breath and discovers that the source of her shame is the moon hovering above them. It looks closer to the surface, glaring with persecution. Inuyasha lets go of her hand, lifting his to his temples. This hasn't been the first time she's witnessed his mortality, but she catches an illness of butterflies in her stomach. His hair is so black, it bleeds into the darkness surrounding them. Inuyasha drags his hands from scratching his scalp to anxiously rubbing his face.

"Are you waiting for me to say something first?" Her voice is smaller than she wants it to be.

"If only you could read the rest of my mind, then I wouldn't have to talk at all." He moans and blows air from his nose.

"Well now you have to talk – better be fast about it too." She folds her arms over her chest, feeling naked.

"I think you got an idea, Sango. You're not dumb." Inuyasha drops his hands, frowning at her. Sango swallows and her ears pop. She figures if she doesn't speak at all, then maybe she wouldn't be forced to acknowledge what he'd been subtly hinting at for days.

But Inuyasha knows that Sango is incapable of lying. He took advantage of her good virtues like the natural born predator that he is. Even if he never meant to be malicious– he consistently held the upper hand.

"Sure, but what good will talking about it do?" She scoffs.

Inuyasha's shoulders fall as he holds his head back. Sango lifts her head to look at the swollen moon.

"I've gotten people killed for not speaking up." And sometimes he wonders if he had been more forthcoming with Kikyou, would everything be different. Though not ever knowing Sango seems a thousand years more sad.

Not knowing Shippo, Miroku, and Kagome...He winces with self-inflicted agony.

"But you're right. What good would talking about it do?" Inuyasha stares into the sky, folding his arms and crossing himself. "Acknowledging it will ruin everything."

She's inclined to agree with him, but how long can they ignore their expanding intimacy?

"Inuyasha," Sango isn't subtle when she says his name– her tone is infected with longing. Inuyasha's heart swells into his throat but he knows better than to look at her. "My father told me that love isn't always an immediate feeling, but once you open your eyes a little wider and it reveals itself, you will know it like you know to eat."

Inuyasha's lips twitch. He silently commands himself to hold his eyes against the stars. Looking at her would be the beginning of something they cannot take back. He doesn't have the soul to tell her to stop, his eyes stinging at thought of 'love'.

"That sounds kinda silly." His throat tightens.

"Not exactly if you really think about it." Sango shrugs. "I feel that way about you."

The forest becomes silent as if the spirits had been observing their circumstance.

Inuyasha blinks twice before facing her. "You want to eat me?" He smiles.

"I want to consume you." She whispers.

Sango's limbs go slack as she lowers her head in shame. She's a second away from sensibly abandoning the conversation, but Inuyasha does exactly what they've both feared for a long time. He steps into her personal space. He's only ever been this close when he suffered a wound and she had to carry him on her back.

"Really?" He lifts her chin with a finger. Sango's strength shatters and she turns back into a thirteen-year- old girl.

"Unfortunately." Her cheeks burn. She keeps her eyes below his nose.

"Don't tell Miroku." He says coolly in hopes for a rise out of her.

"The goal is to make you jealous. So maybe I will." She can't compose herself. The woman steps out of her the moment she meets his dark eyes.

And thank god he's only human for the time being. She would be ashamed if he could sense the bells ringing inside of her body.

Inuyasha leans in to kiss her but Sango tilts her head away and his lips brush her cheek. The wind sweeps through the trees and the forest sighs.

"That's not fair." His breath is warm against her ear.

"When has anything been fair, Inuyasha?" She chastises him. At some point, his arm had found its way around her hip and they remain still for a while. There is more to be said but it wouldn't do them any good. The readiness of her body had said more than she could ever allow herself say. Too bad he's mortal until the sun rises.

Wordless, Sango removes herself from the smell of his skin and heads back towards Kagome, Miroku, Shippo, and Kirara.

Inuyasha doesn't stop her.

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	3. and she exits her body

_**"I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion." ~ Charlotte Brontë**_

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Some people can only ever be opposites.

This becomes evident to Sango when she stumbles upon Kagome and Inuyasha engrossed in a hushed disagreement. Unwinding strands of damp hair through her fingers, she stops between two trees, taking two steps back to absorb their moment. She feels intrusive but that shame dies when she can see that Inuyasha has sensed her. Before he throws his hands up to shaft whatever Kagome is at the cusp of professing, Inuyasha's body stiffens. His hands don't reach his face to sooth his temples– this is how he refrains from acknowledging how oppressive Sango's existence has become.

Kagome's cheeks fill up with air because what she sees in his frustration is a far removed truth. She's too young to truly feel rage, but Kagome stumbles away blinded. Her shaky legs take her away from what she wants to say to him.

She passes Sango who is only a head turn within her reach. Closer than earshot, Sango wants to follow her but men are sweet curses upon a young woman's mind. Three villages of dead families, Kagome had called that an epidemic.

Sango stops trailing Kagome with her eyes and when she turns Inuyasha appears two feet away from the sanctuary of her two trees. The hanging wilderness behind him whistles, a twig snaps off a tree. His feet have destroyed a trail of mushrooms.

Three people. An infestation– all three of them are infected.

In blindness, she'd know Inuyasha like she knew her own body. His stares at her, grinding his teeth.

"What?" She says first as a means of security from whatever can happen. She hopes Inuyasha will let her be because she no longer has the will power to deny him.

His face softens, jaws loosening, eyes regaining the usual softness. As soft as a demon could be. Less sun and more moon is how she can describe it. Inuyasha steps closer and she doesn't step back.

"What?" Sango says with more of herself. Her whole body burns.

Some people can only ever be opposites but Sango and Inuyasha are devastatingly similar. Their thoughts extend outside of each other. Like debris that floats in the air after a village burns down.

Sango blinks and another moment she is in his arms. Damn near she floats into his arms– the tips of her toes keep her in touch with the surface. Everything else flies upwards. The butterflies in her stomach, her arms, her breath. Inuyasha kisses her so hard, it's a shame that her body doesn't sprout wings.

She kisses him back. It's what she had wished for when Kagome pointed at a shooting star.

At first they graze each other with their teeth, then lips between teeth and eventually their tongues arouse their instincts.

Inuyasha sucks Sango's soul from her body. For the first time in her life, she submits.

This isn't a battle. There's no need to fight.

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